I still remember vividly how Crysis 3 performs on my sold off 690, on certain scenes that taxes the card heavily, the framerate dips pretty significantly , as much as 20fps. The scene where Psycho passes the bow to Prophet is one in particular.

On Titan, pretty smooth sailing. Tearing is reduced to minimum without engaging V-Sync, compared to 690.

I dont bench much on my rig, I always build/replace parts on it just so that it's enough to run certain games at certain settings I want. If I can get that performance I want, at stock, even better. That way, I know I have enough headroom to overclock later if I need to.

From this review, it says it connects via a riser card above the mobo, must be like a daughterboard or something. Still no performance loss via this setup, if using 680 or Titan, which is pretty impressive.

Depends.

If you game on 1080p, the 690 > Titan. You wont hit VRAM ceiling on a majority of current modern games at 1080p resolution. But as you game on higher res, there's always the danger of running out of VRAM, coz the 690 has 2GB effective VRAM mirrored between the two 680 GPUs on that single PCB. In this case, Titan > 690. And as you add more monitors (hence increasing res/pixel count) or on beyond 1080p res, that 6GB VRAM on Titan starts showing its usefulness. I feel that a game stutters and framerate spikes/drops when it's approaching its VRAM limit.

No danger of that is you're 1080p, although games like Max Payne 3 has been recorded to use more than 2GB VRAM on 1080p settings.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Apr 4 2013, 12:00 AM

Switch the HDD to SSD and the only heat management required will be from the heat generated by the GPU. Which is not so critical since it's vented towards the back. Asetek CPU watercooling on a chassis this small is really awesome.

Only if the games you're running is in danger of running out of VRAM. Like I said before, most games does not use all 2GB of VRAM. Additional VRAM on a specific graphics cards are used in multi monitor setups or higher than 1080p gaming so you wont run out of VRAM. And when you game on higher than 1080p or multi monitors, another problem arises: can your graphics card handle maintaining the same settings you set at 1080p, now at 1440p/1600p or multimonitor res. You may end up having to reduce game quality settings lower just to get playable framerates.

Got a tweet from @Sharp_Business, who retweeted my tweet about their Sharp 4K monitor, that shipment to authorised dealers and distributors starts next week! Now, to break the piggy bank or not.....

Personally I'd consider my Max setting as everything max but SMAA1x/2x. Max everything Titan on 3-way SLI also can't cope. So that was what I aimed for, and what I got with Titan SLI. I can probably eke out a couple more fps if I'm not bounded by 2-gen-back CPU, but after looking at benches, all I'm getting would probably be extra 10fps max.

Simply put, I put my bar at Crysis 3. If i can run Crysis 3, thh rest would be easy peasy. I know there's more demanding games like Arma 3 Alpha, but thank God I'm not into that. Anything it can run over at the standard I'm looking for, I'm happy already. Not much into benchmarking or pushing the card to its limits. It'll a never ending story otherwise.

In before dipping CPU chips in liquid nitrogen and the likes. Realistically, nobody stocks liquid nitrogen to play Crysis.......or does anyone here? I'd like to see your rig, it's probably forever on the test bench open case setup just to get number 1 on 3DMark. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

According to Nvidia:





Don't shoot the messenger.

Personally I'm tired of the old washed out looks of games on console. Graphics is motivational to me to finish a game.

If that chart is to be believed, if you at the part where Xbox 360 comes in, it was ahead of the PC curve before taken over by the 8800. This time around, the PS4/Xbox 720 starts at a deficit. Which means, unless console gamers have not seen how games looks like on high end setups, they'd probably think that graphics on the PS4 is high end, when it actual fact, it is not. There are many cases where the discrepancies are pretty apparent, like PC vs console BF3, or PC vs console Skyrim.

It's nice to have a specs to write to and aim for, but like you, I too love the upgradability of the PC. That way I can tailor what quality of graphics I want to play on, not stuck on a particular specs.

You can say that's true during the PS3 days where the architechture is different than PC that coding it back for PC will take resources to do so, but with the PS4 and Xbox 720, these two are build more like a PC than anything custom.

Let's put it this way, I doubt that those who has the dough to game on PC would find it hard to pay1/3 of the amount spent on a high end graphics card, to get a console to play console-exclusive games. I'm not saying, totally ditch console, but personally for me, if there are cross platform games, more often than not, it'll look much better on the PC than its console counterpart.

You do notice it says compared to the Titan, the PS4 is said to be 3X inferior? Going by that metric, a 670/680, would be somewhere 2x better than the PS4, and average Joes are already having it in their rig right now.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Apr 5 2013, 02:30 PM

Origin/Steam is not fragmentation, it's the delivery of the games. It's like you're saying Xbox Live and PSN is fragmenting the consoles. They are not, they're content delivery, the content remains the same.

Simply put, if you want simple graphics, consoles are for you. The only reason I'll be returning to consoles is for games not available on PCs.

Anywhere in LYP. Or Digital Mall. AllIT, ViewNet, C-Zone, Cycom. Call ahead first to check they have stock before coming over.

Any of these processors. Top one is the best and you go down the hierarchy from there. I'd suggest the third from the top onwards. Topmost if you got cash to spend.

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/apac/eng/449714.htm

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Apr 5 2013, 05:14 PM

This thread in Tom's Hardware forum: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/378190...pcie-video-card

*notice the guys has the same CPU as I am*

leads to this link on HardOCP: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/07/18/...14#.UV6gLpP-FGs

This link leads to HardwareCanucks http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardw...-review-25.html whom benches the 690, notice the graphs, aren't giving much differences between the two. And for gaming and benching in that regard and purposes, they're essentially the same.

From what I read there, "benchmarkable differences" but not enough real-world performance difference in modern games.

My only question is, how much more I can eke out if I OC the i7 980X further. Diminishing returns comes to mind here, hence why I did not bother going any further than what I had now.

I'm itching to get up to speed with current hardwares, but waiting to see if Haswell gives any benefit. Especially intrigued in super compact rigs. Falcon Northwest Tiki is calling.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Apr 5 2013, 06:07 PM

The Tiki is in addition to the Alienware ALX I have at the moment, bro. Wanna leave the ALX in living room, it'll scare away cats, and small shildren when friends and families come visit, with its looks . Something compact, unobtrusive and would not advertise itself as a "hey look at me, I'm a gaming rig!", that'll fit well in the living room setup, connected to a standard 1080p LCD TV with wireless keyboard/controllers while on the couch. That's where the Tiki comes in.

I've looked into several SFF builds online on YouTube, and particularly smitten by the Bitfenix Prodigy casing. Tiki is by all means smaller than the Prodigy, but I can get the Prodigy build done locally.

Very impressive on the last two pics! Once I decide to ditch this ALX once and for all, I'll consider that route.

3 years ago purchase. At the time I neither had the time nor energy to pursue a custom build.

Maybe I should delay a build until the dust has cleared when it comes Haswell/Maxwell offering is concerned. Which means staying with this "gaming plastic mould" a little bit longer.

Is this PSU power calculator webpage relevant in calculate power draw for gaming rigs? http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

From what I calculated there, my rig draws less power with two Titans compared to two GTX480s. Current 1000W PSU still usable too.

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Apr 6 2013, 01:33 PM

So are those good or bad? As on the PSUs used by Dell in the older day? Say 3 years back.

A cursory Googling says Delta PSUs are of good quality so I guess mine's okay?

A lot of the negativity towards Alienware stems from the fact that they're overpriced. My rig when configured 3 years ago on the online configuration costs RM16k, however I got mine for only RM11k complete with 3 years Dell NBD on site warranty. Sure, they're proprietary and all that, but good quality nonetheless. Taste change, I for one did not like a rectangular box with a see through window at the time, therefore I went for something that is not a simple boring rectangle. Only of recently that you see more irregular cases of design that has opened up the possibilities from "just a rectangular box with a see through windows".

This post has been edited by stringfellow: Apr 6 2013, 04:13 PM